Biotech, 3-D printing to lead to 5m fewer jobs: WEF

[MowCowWhoHow III]

Source: AFP

Paris (AFP) - The latest industrial revolution will not only bring us 3-D printing and biotechnology advances, but the loss of five million jobs in the next five years, according to a report prepared for the Davos forum of business and political elites.

The so-called fourth industrial revolution "will cause widespread disruption not only to business models but also to labour markets over the next five years", the World Economic Forum said announcing a study released ahead of the Davos forum this week.

Following the first industrial revolution of steam engines, then electricity and assembly lines, followed by electronics and robotics, the fourth industrial revolution will include a number of developments like big data and smart systems to transform the economy.

But that transformation will lead "...to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies," said the WEF, after analysing the potential impact on the economies of the United States, Germany, France, China, Brazil and other countries.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/biotech-3-d-printing-lead-5m-fewer-jobs-141735215.html

[MosheFeingold]

1. Maybe

The Salk polio vaccine certainly hurt the iron lung business. And leg brace business.

And getting rid of lead in gasoline probably lowered the need for special education teachers.

And birth control hurt orphanages.

And cell phones have pretty much killed pay phones.

And antibiotics probably really slowed down the funeral home business.

The only thing constant in life is change. (And death. And taxes.)

[Kelvin Mace]

26. Technology changes things

and people adapt.

The only caution I feel requires pointing out is that the rate of change is accelerating.

[Kokonoe]

2. Republicans want to keep it 1950.

Who is right?

[HughBeaumont]

3. Here are some sensible solutions to all this:

1. Make college degrees and technical certifications more expensive and less easy to attain. If you want to better yourself, you'll simply find a way, and that's that.

2. Never ever EVER institute a Guaranteed Minimum Income no matter how necessary it is, because Nikita Khrushchev or something. Besides, it's a tried and true principle that depriving the most needy of citizens of any kind of lifeline will motivate them while overtaxing the merchant caste disincentivizes them.

3. Make the remaining jobs have so many qualifications and lower the pay so much that it will be nearly impossible for an American worker to qualify for them, creating a need to inshore/offshore the jobs to cheaper climes.

4. Invent your way out of your mess!! COME on, you can pull off the nearly-impossible and invent the next technological gadget that will revolutionize the world . . . provided some corporation hasn't already done it, or SAY they did it (so they can sue you into poverty) . . . it's happened before, who's to say it can't happen again? You just have to want it bad enough!!

[LisaL]

4. How is making college degrees more expensive going to help with jobs?

It will only produce more uneducated people.

[PSPS]

5. I think Ward was exhibiting some of that Cleaver humor.

[brooklynite]

19. A person without a college degree is not "uneducated"

[Kelvin Mace]

27. True,

and I know people with MBAs who are quite stupid.

[JCMach1]

8. Precisely what's going on...

[Skittles]

14. I see what you did there

EXCELLENT

[ProfessorGAC]

18. Good One, Hugh!

+1 for a clever post.

[chapdrum]

6. A desirable side effect

for The Owners.

[appalachiablue]

7. Dystopian Hell for non-owner humans has arrived.

[valerief]

9. And computers killed file clerk jobs. nt

[jmowreader]

13. While at the same time creating shitloads of keypunch operator jobs

[valerief]

25. Exactly. Of course, the U.S. can only benefit from technology jobs if our Congress

alters our trade agreements to stop so many jobs to be offshored.

(edited to remove "doesn't" and change "permit" to "stop"; I typed too fast!)

[jmowreader]

29. It also requires a little bit of foresight and a lot of courage

Buggy-whip makers are always held out as a source of derision as an industry that vanished due to technological change, so let's play with them for a while. (I always thought this was a bad example; exactly how big was the demand for whips anyway? Seems to me that once you had a buggy whip it would hold you for a while, so anyone in the buggy whip business would also have to be making other things to survive, like shoes - which you DO buy frequently. But what the hell, let's go with it.)

A buggy-whip manufacturer that refused to make anything but buggy whips would necessarily go under when horseless vehicles took over the transportation industry.

A buggy-whip manufacturer who realized he wasn't in the Buggy Whip business but in the Leather Goods business, and who realized that horseless-carriage owners would need leather coats, gloves and hats to protect them as they drove, would do pretty well for himself.

You can see the same thing across any industry. Look at the entertainment industry...no one would ever want to go to a movie when they could see live people up on the stage, they wouldn't want to hear the actors talk, they wouldn't want to see them in color, they wouldn't want to look at them on a little screen at home when they could look at them on house-sized screens...all the companies who thought that way are now history. (When was the last time you went to an RKO movie? Or a silent film that wasn't named The Artist?)

No, it's fear of the unknown that holds us all back.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. Are you thrilled by the future or threatened by it?

Thrilled equals Liberal, Democratic, Progressive.

Threatened equals Conservative, Republican, Regressive.

[The2ndWheel]

11. Very simplistic

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. Indeed, but an excellent first approximation.

It's why Obama's party is the party of Hope and Change while the Clown party is the party that sells fear of the 'other', exclusion of immigrants, fear of terror, and regression to 1950s and 1850s mindsets.

[Skittles]

15. it is likely that wealth inequality will greatly increase

I see nothing thrilling coming our way

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. There are many thrilling developments coming. Wealth Inequality is a big problem, though

Wealth Inequality is very bad and may get worse in the near future but will get better in medium future. Otherwise there will be violent revolution.

[appalachiablue]

33. On the Davos Annual Conference website, in the 'About' link is a section on 'The Fourth Industrial

Last edited Tue Jan 19, 2016, 11:30 PM - Edit history (1)

Revolution'. Under the topic opportunities and challenges, it states straight up that mass income inequality, a middle class hollowed out by technology, and a society of haves and have nots, with little to no middle class will result. Cheers.

[Skittles]

34. uh huh

ALRIGHTY THEN

[HughBeaumont]

16. People of both stripes are going to get fired by the metric ton and will have no new jobs to go to.

That's supposed to be something we should be thrilled about??

I don't know, do YOU have the thousands upon thousands of dollars for multiple trips to college? Or the thousands more dollars to pay the never-decreasing bills in the meantime from the dole all of them are going to be on?

I'm failing to see what "lesson" this is going to teach anyone.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. Friction in job changeover is a problem, and I'm not expecting you to be thrilled by it.

I am not thrilled by the prospect of some people not being able to change, but progressives and Democrats and Liberals can help a great deal by advancing education and retraining. Of course some people have a hardened mindset and can't be helped.

There are many ways to change, upgrade, and advance without requiring multiple trips to college.

[NickB79]

38. Where does catastrophic climate change fit into that metric?

Because we're already set into motion the 6th planetary mass extinction event (the last one being the death of the dinosaurs).

And I'm definitely not thrilled by that.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

39. Neither am I. No question it is a challenge. nt

[Godhumor]

12. Yeah, that's what can happen when advancements are made

Cost of advancing as a species.

[leftyladyfrommo]

17. Our species is advancing itself into oblivion.

Scary stuff.

[KamaAina]

23. Time for Kurt Vonnegut to write a sequel to "Player Piano".

Oh, right...

Oh, and robots are probably good for another 5M jobs lost in that time frame.

[haele]

24. Eventually, the current model for economic practices will need to change.

What is "efficient" will need to be re-defined, and what is "profitable" will also need to be re-defined.

The shear mass of people who are not going to be eligible for socially meaningful "work" to make their living at will need to have some form of occupation that keeps them going available to them.

Which means that either we as a global society continue with the status quo and:
- accept the devolution back to hunter/gatherer for the most part (which means the privileged rich are the first to get eaten by the masses as their corporate world eventually topples and crumbles from the weight of it's own excess over the next hundred years or so), or
- we as a society techno-destruct as we build more and more technology that will eventually take control of our lives vice us being in control of the technology, or
- we as a society decide it's better to "reign in hell" then "serve in heaven" and blow the whole taco stand in a last ditch attempt to avoid growing up, taking pride in being the last generation standing.

Or, we as a society bite the big f'n bite of baluut known as truth of the real world, and figure out how we are going to manage the equitable sharing of resources so that the fewest amount of damage is done to the earth as a whole, and accept that we're going to have to work hard, and can't expect to buy our way out of it.

The human species is basically a big kid. It's really great being a teenager in a home where everything is being provided for you, but you still have to put away your toys, clean up your room, and help around the house some, so you can learn to take care of yourself, instead of expecting Mommy Earth to provide everything for you.

Haele

[katsy]

28. +1000

[jcboon]

37. Exactly

This is where politics trumps economics. Where the free market no longer works for everyone's benefit Government needs to level the playing field.
Policies that favor working citizens over mega-corporations can alleviate much of the damage.
Put the financial incentives into employment.
Work toward a society that values all contributions and puts the welfare of all It's people ahead of the welfare of the few.

[Humanist_Activist]

30. 3D Printing, combined with widespread adoption of general purpose and adaptable....

automation and AI will cost a lot of jobs, many of which will not have immediate replacements available.

This will be true of unskilled and skilled labor, and will effect jobs as diverse as cashiers at retail to a variety of office jobs. White collar, blue collar, doesn't really matter.

[madville]

31. Drivers and construction workers

Are professions we will see disappear rather quickly, commercial trucks, buses, cars, planes, trains, etc will not have human operators in the near future, that's millions of jobs right there.

They are already rolling out construction robots that work 24 hours a day, there was an article just the other day about a new bricklaying robot that is 10x faster than a human or something like that.

[Humanist_Activist]

35. And its not just drivers, but also support as well...

Truck stops will go away, or radically change from what they were in the past, no truckers means no need for truck stops with showers, restaurants, or even fuel. Given the advances in battery technology, trucks and cars may transition to full electric, and have induction enabled batteries, which means that they can be charged wirelessly, so instead of truck weigh stations, they would be induction chargers, and will not need to be manned, being completely automated. So you can have trucks and cars whose only human contact would be with passengers and consumers, no human would be involved in the operation or maintenance of these vehicles.

[FLPanhandle]

32. It's easy to see the jobs that will be lost, it's harder to predict the jobs that will be created

How many 3-D printed components will be the foundation of new businesses?

How will biotechnology and healthier people increase exercise and outdoor equipment demands?

As with automobiles, people could see the end of blacksmith jobs and horse breeders and coachmen. They failed miserably in predicting all the new industries and jobs that changes brought. This article follows that same path.

[Humanist_Activist]

36. Not nearly as many new jobs were created, and the transition did occur enough...

for some to advance. My Great-Great Grandfather was a blacksmith who then turned his shop into a mechanics shop. It was a reasonable and expected transition, if you think about it. Wagon shops did the same, teamsters became drivers, etc. Technically there were not a whole lot of new job types created, mostly just adaptions of old ones to new technology. The only new job type of any significance in the past century or so is that of the programmer/software developer.

But the automobile was still a labor saving device, that still required humans to control it, this is slightly different, we are talking about replacing humans at every level except decision making(and even that is up in the air). Too many jobs would be displaced.

A realistic scenario would be that of the long-distance truck driver, replaced completely by a self-driving truck or, more likely, a road train. No human is near any wheel, indeed, the truck itself will look far different, most likely designed from the chassis up with no human in mind as even so much as a passenger, saving a little on weight and material in the process. So no steering wheels, no trucker at all. But its not just this one trucker replaced, but all of them, which means truck stops would only be good for refueling/recharging, and that will be the only reason, outside of mechanical breakdowns, for these road trains to stop. This means that the truck stops will also most likely be completely automated as well.